Traditional NOC Services a Perfect Beginning for a new MSP

When a VAR first decides it is time to begin to shift their business to the Managed Service Provider (MSP) model, they start moving customer by customer away from break-fix and over to a managed service that fits their needs. This is often a process that takes months or years to get all the customers moved to the new model. In the beginning the scale of the managed services part of the business is very small and, because the VAR is new to managed services, they need help in getting their new business up and running. At this point the traditional shared services NOC is a great solution because the NOC provider has scale to operate efficiently with a wide breadth of capabilities and to do so 24/7. In addition, the VAR benefits from the process definition and advice they get from the provider.

The Efficiency Seesaw

An interesting shift takes place as the VAR’s MSP business grows. First, efficiency shifts. As the MSP side of the business grows the VAR’s scale approaches a point that the additional efficiency of provided by the shared NOC is minimal and the remaining efficiency gets lost in communications overhead. Add to that the lack of consistent service from individual to individual NOC engineer and you are actually operating at less efficiency than what you could with your own team. Secondly, as the VAR gains experience in the MSP business, they will want to be able to better define their services, procedures and workflow than is possible with a shared NOC provider. It is at this point that the value of a traditional shared NOC becomes negative and it is time to seek a new type of services partner.

What’s Next?

At this point, the VAR needs to make a choice to either build their own NOC and deliver their services internally or to find a different type of service provider that can bring many of the benefits of the shared NOC, but without the difficulties. In my next post I will describe what is involved in doing it internally, what this different type of provider looks like and explain why it still makes more business sense to continue to partner.